Many times, you have heard of the word format, either because you have been recommended, or because when buying a hard drive or any other storage device, the operating system has expressly requested that you format, depending on the version and Type of the operating system, this will give you different options to format it.

It is normal, that after these situations, you have wondered, what is and what is the use of formatting a storage device, a situation that we have all happened at some point, well, when we format a device, what we are doing is to allow That the system initiates a process by which the storage device is prepared, providing it with a base file system, which will allow us to be able to use it in said operating system and with any system compatible with the file system we have given it.

Since each system uses its own file system, which is not always compatible with other systems, although this is something that we will see later in this article, this way we prepare the storage device to record in any type of File, either text, video, audio … or any other type of files.

During that process, it erases all information on the hard drive, although I have warned you, there are programs and techniques by which, you can recover certain files, so if you have sensitive information, and format with the intention of only erasing a disk Before throwing it away, I advise you to destroy it physically.

The formatting of any storage device, serves several things:

It erases all the contents of the hard disk, so if you are thinking about formatting, save the data to another hard disk first.

Establish a recording system that indicates what will be recorded on the device and where it will be located on the disc.

Check for possible physical or magnetic errors on the hard disk, and stop using those sectors that are damaged, (something very useful, but this only does it with low level formatting).

It gives you a specific file system or files, depending on the operating system, which can be:

The file system is very important, and according to the system will allow us to format it in some formats or others as indicated above, I recommend you always format them in NTFS, if they are portable storage devices, as this system Of files is recognized by any system today, thus you will save compatibility problems.

Anyway, I hope that this information has served you to understand well, for it is good to format the hard disk, I have to specify, that the description here shown, is aimed at common users, so the description is quite generic, and I have Described in the least technical way possible, any information that you want to contribute, will be welcomed by means of a comment, and of course whenever it has been written by yourselves and from the respect, thank you for your visit, and I hope that you return soon.